This is a writ of error, issued under the 25th section of the Judiciary Act of 1789, to the Supreme Court of Errors of the State of Connecticut.
The attorney of the State for the county of Fairfield presented to the Superior Court for that county, at the August term, 1866, an information charging Edward McGuire with the crime of grand larceny. A bench warrant, returnable to the same term, was thereupon issued. McGuire was arrested and held in custody. The court fixed the amount of bail to be given at $8000. On the 24th of September, 1866, McGuire and the other plaintiffs in error entered into a recognizance to the defendant in error in that sum, conditioned that McGuire should appear before the Superior Court, to be held at Danbury, in Fairfield County, on the third Tuesday of October, 1866, to answer to the information before mentioned, and abide the order and judgment of the court. McGuire was thereupon released from custody. He failed to appear according to the condition of the recognizance, and it was duly forfeited on the 16th of October, 1866.
This suit was thereupon instituted in the Superior Court of Fairfield County to recover the amount of the obligation. The facts developed at the trial, and relied upon by the defendants to defeat the action were, according to the practice in that State, found and certified by the court, and became a part of the record. So far as it is necessary to state them, they are as follows:
After the recognizance was entered into McGuire went into the State of New York, where he belonged. While there, upon a requisition from the governor of Maine upon the governor of New York, he was seized by the legal officers of New York, and was by them forthwith, on the 19th of October, 1866, delivered over to the proper officers of the State of Maine, by whom he was immediately and against his will removed to that State. The requisition charged a burglary alleged to have been committed by McGuire in Maine before the recognizance in question in this case was taken. At the time of the forfeiture of the recognizance McGuire was, and he has been ever since, legally imprisoned in Maine. In June, 1867, he was tried there for the burglary charged in the requisition, and convicted and sentenced to confinement in the penitentiary for fifteen years, and was, at the time of the trial of this case in the court below, serving out his time under that sentence. Neither of the sureties knew, when they entered into the recognizance, that there was any charge of crime against McGuire other than the one alleged in the information in Connecticut. If the testimony were admissible, the plaintiff proved that the sum of $8000 was placed in the hands of the sureties to indemnify them against the liability they assumed, and if the testimony were admissible, the sureties proved that the money was not placed in their hands by McGuire nor by any one in his behalf; and that, so far as the sureties knew, it was done without his knowledge.
The Superior Court gave judgment for the plaintiff. The defendants thereupon removed the case to the Supreme Court of Errors for Fairfield County. That court affirmed the judgment, and the defendants thereupon brought this writ of error.
The fact that the sureties were indemnified was proper to be considered by the Superior Court upon an application for time to produce the body of McGuire. But it could have no effect upon the rights of the parties in this action, and may therefore be laid out of view.
It is the settled law of this class of cases that the bail will be exonerated where the performance of the condition is rendered impossible by the act of God, the act of the obligee, or the act of the law. Where the principal dies before the day of performance, the case is within the first category. Where the court before which the principal is bound to appear is abolished without qualification, the case is within the second. If the principal is arrested in the State where the obligation is given and sent out of the State by the governor, upon the requisition of the governor of another State, it is within the third. In such cases the governor acts in his official character, and represents the sovereignty of the State in giving efficacy to the Constitution of the United States and the law of Congress. If he refuse, there is no means of compulsion. But if he act, and the fugitive is surrendered, the State whence he is removed can no longer require his appearance before her tribunals, and all obligations which she has taken to secure that result thereupon at once, ipso facto, lose their binding effect. The authorities last referred to proceed upon this principle.